While Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning created abstract-expressionist paintings bursting with energy and movement, Mark Rothko preferred the quiet, contemplative and mysterious.
Toward the end of his life, his paintings grew darker in color and brooding in mood, visible evidence of a deepening depression that led to his suicide in 1970.
The painter had two children, including his son, Christopher, who was born in 1963. An authority on his father’s work, he has served as a consultant for many exhibitions and was editor of a recent collection of the painter’s philosophical writings, “The Artist’s Reality.”
He will take part in a panel discussion after Wednesday’s performance of “The Tiger’s Ear: Listening to Abstract Expressionist Painting,” which evokes the work of Rothko and five other painters.
In an interview by phone from New York, he discussed memories of his father and the painter’s extraordinary legacy.
Q. What was Rothko’s relationship like with the five other abstract-expressionist pioneers featured in the composition?
A. They certainly knew each other’s artwork and, I think, largely appreciated each other’s artwork. But, of course, there were fights, and my father specifically had fallings out with (Clyfford) Still and (Barnett) Newman that were fairly ugly.
Although he thought his painting was distinct from the others, he certainly appreciated what they were doing. The only tag on this is that my father, at a certain point, said, “I’m not going to participate in group shows.”
He felt that his paintings really worked best when they were shown in their own company. And when you started putting them on the wall next to a Still or De Kooning, the paintings fought with each other rather than harmonizing.
Q. What was your father like? What was the man like whom you remember as a child?
A. I have a couple of points of reference for that. My sister is 13 years older, and we’re very close. And she’s told me a lot that I didn’t get to see for myself, and we have a couple of close family friends who were very good friends with my parents during the ’50s and ’60s.
But I do have real memories. And in addition, when I read something or see a movie depiction of him that doesn’t feel quite right, I know I have this internal gut sense of what he was like that you can’t put into words, but you know when something is a little off. And it’s a very helpful thing to me.
People tend to talk about how very serious he was, which about artwork was absolutely true. But he really had an art-world persona, and when he was not doing art, that turned off and he really did not bring the art world home.
He was really just a very warm man, and he loved his friends and loved social gatherings even as you’ll read that in his work he was very reclusive. He wouldn’t allow people in his studio when he painted and he got very serious, and, at the end of his life, got very depressed. But there were sort of two parallel tracks, two sides to the man.
Q. How have you come to terms with your father’s suicide – or have you come to terms with it?
A. The easy answer is that I must have come to terms with it on some level, because I spend most of time these days looking after my father’s work, helping create exhibitions and catalogs and I lecture and write on his work. I must have come to some peace with it or I wouldn’t be doing this, because it’s definitely a matter of choice. But there are many points where I notice his absence, and it’s a hard thing.
Q. Unlike some artists, whose legacy was established after their deaths, I don’t think that was ever the case with Rothko. He gained fame while he was alive, and it has only grown since. Is that your take?
A. He was solidly into middle age before he got any recognition at all. He felt like he had really paid his dues and felt that was actually very important for an artist. But since his death, it’s never exactly linear, but there’s definitely been no fall-off in his reputation. And certainly, over the last 20 years or so, it’s been growing pretty considerably, which obviously makes me happy.
